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So how are you supposed to lose weight?

So how are you supposed to lose weight?

Online dietitian Jonathan Klaassen shared his vision about weight loss diets in a previous article, and why you should not follow them. But "how should it be?" we hear you think. In this article, the dietitian tells you how to lose weight. Read it, get started and give yourself time to lose those extra pounds. No weight loss diet, but a healthy lifestyle that you can follow for the rest of your life.

Online dietitian Jonathan Klaassen explains in this article how to lose weight. Are you reading along?

Assess your diet

Before you get started with nutrition, online dietitian Jonathan recommends that you first examine your own eating and drinking pattern. You can get valuable information from that.
You gain insight into what is going well and what can be improved, and this makes it clear where your personal opportunities lie. Don't just focus on the things you can improve on. No, it is precisely the things that are already going well that are very relevant to discover, because you should not make any changes to them. On the contrary. Leave them alone and don't dig into them (read:that happens with weight loss diets).

Also read Jonathan's previous article: 'Why you should not follow a weight loss diet'

Keep track of what you eat and drink

Now keep a food and drink diary for a few days. Take two weekdays and one day at the weekend to get a good and average picture. Do this online, on the Nutrition Center website, or download the Eetmeter app and keep track of everything on your phone. Now take a look at what you consume on average in kilocalories. Good general guidelines for weight loss are 1500 kilocalories for women and 2000 kilocalories for men. If you find an app too difficult, take a notebook in which you write everything down and look at it at the end of the day.

Be critical!

Check the results of your food and drink diary and ask yourself a few questions:do you snack too much? Are the portions too big? Are you drinking too much? Are you eating too few fruits and vegetables? Or are there other points where opportunities lie? Know where your opportunities lie, take action and be satisfied with the things that are going well.

Make sure to maintain a negative energy balance

You take in less energy than you expend – negative energy balance – and so you lose weight. You can achieve a reduction in energy intake by snacking less, drinking less alcohol and sugary drinks or by reducing your portions slightly. Decide for yourself which of these adjustments can help you.

Keep track of your progress Keep track of your progress, so you know how things are going. You can do this by stepping on the scale every week or measure the circumference of your shoulders, chest, waist and hips with a tape measure. What also works really well is making progress photos. These are pictures of you in underwear or swimwear. You take a picture of the front, back and side. Take your measurements once a month and compare the results. That's how you know if you're on the right track. A good guideline is to lose 0.5 to 1 kilo per week. If you have already lost a lot of weight, this will decrease slightly.

Haven't read Jonathan's article about weight loss diets yet? Click here

Jonathan Klaassen

Jonathan Klaassen is an online dietitian &writer. As an online dietitian, he helps people every day through his online programs. He also writes articles about nutrition and food hypes that he shares online or you can read them in his books. Do you want Jonathan as an online dietitian? Click here for more information!